Kenneth Dewar
Encyclopedia
Vice-Admiral Kenneth Gilbert Balmain Dewar, CBE
, RN
(21 September 1879 – 8 September 1964) was an officer of the Royal Navy
. After specialising as a gunnery officer, Dewar became a staff officer and a controversial student of naval tactics before seeing extensive service during the First World War. He served in the Dardanelles Campaign and commanded a monitor
in home waters before serving at the Admiralty
for more than four years of staff duty. After the war ended he became embroiled in the controversy surrounding the consequences of the Battle of Jutland
. Despite this, he held a variety of commands during the nineteen twenties.
In 1928 he was at the heart of the "Royal Oak Mutiny", when as Captain of the battleship
Royal Oak he forwarded his executive officer's letter of complaint about their immediate superior, Rear-Admiral Collard, to higher authority. This came in the wake of a series of incidents aboard ship. All three men were ordered back to Britain, and Dewar and his executive officer requested Courts-martial
so that they might defend themselves. The trials were held in Gibraltar
and garnered widespread media coverage.
Dewar, though found partially guilty, survived with a severe reprimand. His executive officer was found guilty and resigned, while Collard was compelled to resign his commission for provoking the situation. Having then commanded successively the two oldest capital ships in the fleet, Dewar retired on promotion to Rear-Admiral. His memoirs, published as The Navy from Within in 1939, were a vitriolic indictment of the Navy's practices.
, where he studied for two years. Two of his brothers joined the navy; Alfred Charles (b.1876) who was promoted to Captain
on the Retired List
and was appointed Head of the Historical Section of the Naval Staff, and Alan Ramsay (b.1887) who achieved Flag Rank in 1938. Dewar performed so well in Britannia, that upon graduation, he was appointed Midshipman straight away, which normally required a year's service at sea and passing an examination. He joined the protected cruiser
Hawke
on 20 August 1895. The following year he was appointed to the battleship
Magnificent
on 30 October 1896. Promoted Acting Sub-Lieutenant
, Dewar was confirmed in that rank and promoted to Lieutenant
on 8 March 1900. Upon promotion he was posted to the Devonport
destroyer
Osprey
on 15 March. On 12 June he was appointed to the torpedo-boat destroyer Fervent.
, the renowned gunnery expert. His performance on the two-year course was so impressive that on graduation he was given command of a ship. From 21 July 1903, Dewar was Lieutenant and Commander of the Chatham-based destroyer Mermaid
.
Dewar became the gunnery officer of the armoured cruiser Kent
on 24 August 1905, where he remained until 1908. Dewar's dedication and standard of training became evident when his ship led the Fleet in battle practice firings and gunlayer's-test. He was re-assigned to Excellent on 19 January 1908 for instruction duties. Soon he was sent to sea again, being made gunnery officer of the battleship Prince George
on 8 February 1908. He rejoined Excellent on 22 December that year. On 11 June 1909 Dewar was "lent" as gunnery officer to the protected cruiser Spartiate for the annual fleet manœuvres. Once the manœuvres were finished, Dewar was made assistant to the Inspector of Target Practice, an important gunnery position at the Admiralty on 17 July. In the same year, he was asked to lecture on the Imperial Japanese Navy
, which he had previously had experience of, at the Royal Naval War College at Portsmouth. During his talk, he exhibited an unpalatable forthrightness by saying that the Royal Navy needed more intellectual officers like Togo Heihachiro
, implying that there was a dearth of such officers. The President of the College, Lewis Bayly
, abruptly terminated his lecture.
On 1 January 1910, Dewar was once more given sea duty as First Lieutenant and Gunnery Officer (referred to as "1st and G") of Dreadnought
. Dreadnought was still one of the most prestigious postings in the fleet despite the growing number of newer dreadnought
battleships and battle cruisers entering service. It was Dewar's misfortune during this service to be taken in by the Dreadnought hoax
on 10 February, in which he escorted a party of practical jokers, that included Virginia Woolf
, pretending to be Abyssinian
royalty on an official visit to the battleship. However, Dewar befriended the captain, Herbert Richmond
, who acted both as a friend and a mentor to him in the following years. With Richmond's encouragement, Dewar began a thorough study of naval tactics and strategy which would later continue at the Royal Naval War College.
's orders in 1912. He was consequently reappointed for duty at the War College on 2 April 1912. On 4 March 1913 it was announced that Commander Dewar had been awarded the Gold Medal and Trench-Gascoigne prize by the Royal United Service Institution for his winning essay on the question "What is the war value of oversea commerce? How did it affect our naval policy in the past and how does it in the present day?" The final chapter of the paper was suppressed from publication by the Admiralty; in it Dewar advocated a "distant" blockade in a war with Germany at a time (1912) when the Royal Navy was still contemplating a "close" blockade of the German coastline. In the event a distant blockade was imposed. Dewar was then and remained unsympathetic to the removal of his concluding chapter;
Dewar's reputation as an intellectual within the navy was confirmed when in 1912, he became one of the founder members of The Naval Review, an independent journal of Royal Navy officers. That year Richmond had formed a "Naval Society" with a dozen friends, Dewar among them. After Richmond went abroad on active service, Dewar decided that instead of being a society of purely discussion, it ought publish a journal, to which end he "raised subscriptions for the first issue from some forty or fifty officers of all ranks".
In 1914 Dewar was appointed commander (second-in-command) of the battleship Prince of Wales
, then flagship of the 5th Battle Squadron in the 2nd Fleet (Home Fleets). On 28 July Dewar married Gertrude Margaret Stapleton-Bretherton in a service at St. Bartholomew's Church in Rainhill
on Merseyside
. The service was conducted by the Archbishop of Liverpool
and the Bishop of Portsmouth
. Dewar's best man was the Honourable Reginald Plunkett
, who later became known as Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, and would go on to achieve high rank in the navy. Dewar and Gertrude had one son together, Kenneth Malcolm J. Dewar.
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In August 1914 Britain went to war with Germany, and later that year with the Ottoman Empire
(modern-day Turkey
). Prince of Wales remained in the 5th Battle Squadron until 1915, when with a number of other pre-dreadnoughts she was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to support the Gallipoli landings, the goal of which was to capture the strategically important Dardanelles Straits
, take Constantinople
and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. As second-in-command of Prince of Wales, Dewar was present for part of the naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
against the Turkish positions. Following aborted attempts to lend heavy-gunfire support to the troops at ANZAC Cove
, Dewar wrote an unofficial memo to the Rear-Admiral commanding the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, with suggestions for the employment of indirect fire to attack Turkish targets. Dewar heard nothing of his proposals, and it was not until November, 1915 that indirect fire was used with good effect by the bulged cruiser Edgar
. Following the campaign, in October Dewar was given command of HM Gunnery School, Devonport. It was an important position as large numbers of Reserve
and Volunteer Reserve officers either re-qualified or qualified in gunnery duties. After a year Dewar returned to sea in command of the Abercrombie class monitor
Roberts
, and joined the Dover Patrol in August, 1916.
In response to the German battle cruiser raids on the British coast
, a visible response was called for to quell public anxiety. On 27 May 1916 Roberts arrived at Gorleston
to act as a guard ship for the port of Yarmouth
, in effect acting as a coastal defence battery. Roberts fulfilled such duties at Tyneside
and in the Thames Estuary
for the rest of the war. Once again Dewar was rotated back to shore, and was appointed to the Operations Division of the Naval Staff under first the Jellicoe, and then the Wemyss Boards of Admiralty. Dewar was promoted to the rank of Captain on 30 June 1918 in the Half-Yearly lists and then became Assistant Director of Plans in the Plans Division. On 17 October 1919 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for valuable services at the Peace Conference, Paris
."
. The manner in which the battle had been fought had come under criticism, with a line drawn between those who supported Sir John Jellicoe
, who had commanded the Grand Fleet at the battle; and those who fell-in behind his then-subordinate, and successor, Sir David Beatty. Dewar followed the Beatty school of thought espoused by his former Captain, Herbert Richmond, that the battle had been lost by the staid admirals of the battleship squadrons. In November, 1920 he and his brother Captain Alfred Dewar (retired) were entrusted with compiling the Naval Staff Appreciation of the battle, which was completed in January, 1922. The two brothers had produced a body of work which favoured Beatty, for whom the Dewars' "capacity for original thinking and literary talents always held an appeal." Even Richmond, who intensely disliked Jellicoe, and was a confidant of Beatty, agreed with the Committee on Imperial Defence's official naval historian, Sir Julian Corbett
who wrote that Dewar's "facts were, I found, very loose."
The Appreciation, which had originally been intended for distribution around the Royal Navy, was deemed so full of "far-reaching and astringent criticism of Jellicoe" and of new and therefore irrelevant tactical theory that Beatty and his Board of Admiralty were compelled to decide against its publication. Indeed, Admirals Roger Keyes and Ernle Chatfield were moved to write to Beatty that if published the Appreciation "would rend the service to its foundations". The final straw had been the very public heckling of Dewar when he lectured from his Appreciation to the twenty students of the Senior Officers' War Course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. It was decided to expurgate the existing document, which had been removed from circulation and release it. It was published as The Narrative of the Battle of Jutland in 1924.
All copies of the original Appreciation were ordered destroyed in 1928 and before the "Narrative" had been published Dewar and his brother had already been barred access to the original. However, he continued to have a major impact on the historiography of the Battle of Jutland by serving throughout the 1920s as Winston Churchill's naval consultant on submarine-warfare. Churchill wrote an anti-Jellicoe tract in his World Crisis, Volume III which in large measure shared Dewar's views on tactics and even some diagrams. Although Dewar would later become a supporter of the Labour Party
, after Churchill was passed over for a cabinet position in 1931 Dewar wrote to him on 16 November, "I am very sorry to see that you are not in the new Cabinet. I had hoped you would go to the Admiralty and do very necessary work for the Navy."
" (the systematic contraction of the Naval Service to a size substantially smaller than its pre-war level) and his controversial tenure at the Admiralty that he was still considered worthy of sea duty, the qualification for promotion to flag rank. He was appointed on 9 May to command the C class cruiser
Calcutta
, flagship on the North America and West Indies Station. In 1923 Dewar was given command of Calcutta's sister-ship on the same station, HMS Cape Town. While on the station he had occasion to act as Flag Captain
to the Commander-in-Chief on the station, pay calls on cities as diverse as Halifax, Nova Scotia
, Quebec City
and Boston
while cruising the Eastern Seaboard of North America. During the U.S. blockade of the Mexican port of Tampico
in 1924 Dewar and Cape Town cancelled their planned cruise of the Caribbean
to adequately represent the British government at Vera Cruz
, proceeding there on 4 January.
On 15 May 1924 Dewar was relieved in command of Cape Town by Captain G.H. Knowles, DSO
. On 2 May 1925 he returned to the Admiralty as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. After two years in the position he was relieved in June, 1927 and given, from 15 October command of the battleship Royal Oak, flagship of the Rear-Admiral in the 1st Battle Squadron
, Mediterranean Fleet. The Rear-Admiral, 1st Battle Squadron was Bernard St. George Collard.
As Flag Captain to Admiral Collard, Dewar was technically Collard's chief staff officer as well as captain of the Royal Oak. A good working relationship between Dewar and the second-in-command of the battle squadron was necessary. Notwithstanding, Collard on occasion acted imperiously and tactlessly on his flagship, causing friction with Dewar and his executive officer, Commander Henry Martin Daniel, DSO. At a dance on the quarterdeck on 12 January 1928, Collard openly lambasted Royal Marine Bandmaster, Percy Barnacle, and allegedly said "I won't have a bugger like that in my ship" in the presence of ship's officers and guests. Dewar and Daniel accused Collard of "vindictive fault-finding" and openly humiliating and insulting them before their crew, referring to an incident involving Collard's disembarkation from the ship on 5 March where the admiral had openly said that he was "fed up with the ship"; Collard countercharged the two with failing to follow orders and treating him "worse than a midshipman".
Dewar and Daniel, feeling that morale was sinking due to these public displays, wrote letters of complaint which were given to Collard on 10 March, on the eve of a major exercise. Collard forwarded the letters to his superior, Vice-Admiral Sir John Kelly; he immediately passed them on to the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. On realising that the relationship between the two and their Flag Officer had irretrievably broken down, Keyes ordered the exercise postponed by fifteen hours and ordered a Court of Inquiry to be convened. As a consequence, Collard was ordered to strike his flag in Royal Oak and Dewar and Daniel were ordered back to Britain. The Admiralty was informed of the bare facts on the 12th and Keyes proceeded to sea with the Mediterranean Fleet for the exercise as planned. The press picked up on the story worldwide, describing the affair—with some hyperbole—as a "mutiny". Public attention reached such proportions as to raise the concerns of the King
, who summoned First Lord of the Admiralty William Bridgeman
for an explanation.
Having arrived back in England, Dewar and Daniel gave their version of events at the Admiralty, and put in writing requests for reinstatement in their positions in Royal Oak, or trial by Court-martial
. Having received Keyes' full dispatch on 16 March, the Board of Admiralty resolved that Dewar and Daniel should undergo trial by Court-martial as soon as possible at Gibraltar
, where Royal Oak was due to be berthed. Consequently Dewar and Commander Daniel departed Southampton in the P&O
liner Malwa with their counsel, Mr. Day Kimball, and their wives, on the 24th and reached Gibraltar in the evening of the 27th. The two officers were immediately attached to the Gibraltar base ship, HMS Cormorant in accordance with naval custom. It was arranged that Daniel would face Court-martial first, on 30 March, and Dewar's would follow at its conclusion.
The Courts-martial were held publicly in hangar "A" of the aircraft carrier
Eagle
. Because ten Captains from the fleet sat as members of the Court, the departure of the Mediterranean Fleet was delayed until the end of the proceedings. Out of four charges which Daniel faced, two related to writing an allegedly subversive letter (the complaint) and the latter two to publicly reading it out to officers of Royal Oak. Dewar consequently faced the charge of having forwarded said subversive letter. The court found Daniel "guilty" on all four charges in the afternoon of 3 April and dismissed him from his ship and ordered him to be severely reprimanded.
Dewar's own Court-martial began on 4 April. The Court trying him was composed of five Rear-Admirals and eight Captains. Dewar pleaded "not guilty to two charges of accepting and forwarding a letter subversive of discipline and contrary to King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions". Dewar had the opportunity of cross-examining Rear-Admiral Collard over the incident of the dance and the disembarkation. Collard admitted to saying certain things but refused to say that he had used improper words and not in earshot of anyone other than the Captain.
In his defence, Dewar attacked one of the charges against him, namely that of contravening Article 11 of King's Regulations; he declared the charge invalid because his actions did not "bring him into contempt", and from witness testimony he portrayed himself as having acted in the best interests of his ships, his actions against Rear-Admiral Collard having been made out of a sense of duty and loyalty and not malice. Discounting one charge, he said, meant that the first had to fail as well.
The Court reached its verdict on 5 April. The first charge was found proven, the second unproven, and Dewar was therefore acquitted of acting against regulations. However, despite his spotless record, when the Court sentenced him he was dismissed HMS Cormorant, and severely reprimanded—a potentially career-destroying result. However, there was some popular support for his continued service in the navy. Questions were asked in the House of Commons
as to whether Dewar or Daniel would be found new positions. The First Lord, Bridgeman, stated that they would be found positions in the Navy as soon as vacancies arose. Dewar's career was reprieved for the time being. Daniel however resigned from the service, and following a unsuccessful attempt at a career in journalism, disappeared into obscurity in South Africa.
, the oldest of her type still in service and engaged primarily in training. However, it demonstrated the Admiralty's continued albeit conditional faith in him. He commanded Tiger until he was given command of HMS Iron Duke
the following year. On 29 May 1929 he was made a naval aide-de-camp
(ADC) to King George V
. However, Dewar's time in the Navy was drawing to a close. On 4 August he was finally promoted to Rear-Admiral, and the following day he was retired. Promotion to flag rank also saw the end of his duty as ADC to the King. On the day of his promotion he was also granted the Good Service pension of £150 per annum.
, Dewar stood as a Labour party
candidate in Portsmouth North, where he lost against the incumbent by 14,149 votes. Once more however Dewar was unable to escape controversy, having put up posters around the naval city which raised indignation among many sailors and officers.
The posters, which Dewar himself called "propaganda sheets", were titled "Admiral Dewar's Election News", and carried the statement "The British Navy at Jutland
in 1916 beat the ex-Kaiser; and at Invergordon
in 1931 it beat Mr. Montagu Norman
", and featured prominently a depiction of the former Kaiser of Germany in civilian clothing in front of a sea battle, with the Governor of the Bank of England
, Montagu Norman, looking on. A notice beneath the picture read:
Dewar was accused of comparing Jutland to the Invergordon Mutiny
, which rankled with many servicemen who had fought at Jutland but had taken no part in the 1931 mutiny in Northern Scotland. He claimed in his defence–a statement issued to the press on 29 October 1931–that he had had nothing to do with the design or production of the poster, which had been published by the National Cooperative Publishing Society. Later, however, Dewar wrote, "I deeply regret that this picture should ever have been associated with my name." At this point he had already lost at the polls by a substantial margin, the election having taken place on the 27 October.
and its successor
, and to criticise the size of the Treaty battleship
. On the Retired List of the Royal Navy, he was promoted to the rank of Vice-Admiral (Retd.) on 31 July 1934.
In early 1939 Dewar's memoirs were published. Entitled The Navy from Within he recounted his life story, while at the same time criticising severely the manner in which the Royal Navy trained its officers, blaming defects in said training for the naval failure at Gallipoli. However, his account was criticised as being far too harsh and at points hypocritical, for after condemning the naval system of training he then makes many mentions of naval officers who he himself considered to be excellent. In a letter to The Times
, Dewar complained that their reviewer was taking far too much issue with the author, which as the reviewer pointed out, "a review of an autobiography
must necessarily deal largely with the author himself". Responding to a review of The Navy from Within in The Naval Review which questioned the prominence of "The Royal Oak Affair" in the book, Dewar responded by stating;
Dewar, despite the attached stigma of the mutiny and criticism of his memoirs, was still held in high regard by many, and as war approached he wrote a number of letters to The Times criticising the cost of the Air Raid Precautions
network, which attracted much support in the "Letters" pages in that newspaper. During the Second World War he returned to the Admiralty, working under his brother Alfred in the Historical Section of the Training and Staff Duties Division. After the war ended, Dewar would win one final victory when he sued the author and publisher of a book on Admiral Keyes for libel in 1953. In the book written by Brigadier-General Aspinall Oglander was a letter from Keyes to the King's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham in which Keyes accused Dewar of having made contact with the press in his defence. Dewar denied this and the High Court of Justice
agreed with him, finding in his favour. The solicitors acting on behalf of Aspinall-Oglander and the publishers, Hogarth Press Ltd., agreed to apologise in court and paid Dewar damages and expenses.
In 1957 he returned to his earlier theme on the failings of officer training, in a three-part exposition on the Dardanelles Campaign for The Naval Review, the journal he had helped found over forty years previously. In the concluding article, published in October, 1957, Dewar wrote that the failure of the Navy to adequately support the Army at Gallipoli "is to be found in the system of training officers which consciously or unconsciously suppressed independent thought and suggestions from subordinates." Despite his later close association with Churchill, he criticised the former First Lord's unrealistic expectations and also Lord Fisher's inability to rein him in for want of a naval staff; and Admiral of the Fleet
(at the time Commodore
) Roger Keyes for actively trying to gain support for forcing the straits again instead of acting as chief of staff and only advising the Naval Commander at the Dardanelles.
Dewar was given the last rites
on 8 September 1964 and died at his home in Worthing
, Sussex
. He was buried at St. Bartholomew's Church, Rainhill
, Lancashire
on 12 September.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
, RN
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
(21 September 1879 – 8 September 1964) was an officer of the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
. After specialising as a gunnery officer, Dewar became a staff officer and a controversial student of naval tactics before seeing extensive service during the First World War. He served in the Dardanelles Campaign and commanded a monitor
Monitor (warship)
A monitor was a class of relatively small warship which was neither fast nor strongly armoured but carried disproportionately large guns. They were used by some navies from the 1860s until the end of World War II, and saw their final use by the United States Navy during the Vietnam War.The monitors...
in home waters before serving at the Admiralty
Admiralty
The Admiralty was formerly the authority in the Kingdom of England, and later in the United Kingdom, responsible for the command of the Royal Navy...
for more than four years of staff duty. After the war ended he became embroiled in the controversy surrounding the consequences of the Battle of Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
. Despite this, he held a variety of commands during the nineteen twenties.
In 1928 he was at the heart of the "Royal Oak Mutiny", when as Captain of the battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
Royal Oak he forwarded his executive officer's letter of complaint about their immediate superior, Rear-Admiral Collard, to higher authority. This came in the wake of a series of incidents aboard ship. All three men were ordered back to Britain, and Dewar and his executive officer requested Courts-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
so that they might defend themselves. The trials were held in Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
and garnered widespread media coverage.
Dewar, though found partially guilty, survived with a severe reprimand. His executive officer was found guilty and resigned, while Collard was compelled to resign his commission for provoking the situation. Having then commanded successively the two oldest capital ships in the fleet, Dewar retired on promotion to Rear-Admiral. His memoirs, published as The Navy from Within in 1939, were a vitriolic indictment of the Navy's practices.
Early life and career
Dewar was born in Queensferry on 21 September 1879, the son of Dr. James and Mrs. Flora Dewar. In July, 1893 he was nominated as a naval cadet, passed the entrance examination and joined the training ship BritanniaHMS Prince of Wales (1860)
HMS Prince of Wales was one of six 121-gun screw-propelled first-rate three-decker line-of-battle ships of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 25 January 1860...
, where he studied for two years. Two of his brothers joined the navy; Alfred Charles (b.1876) who was promoted to Captain
Captain (Royal Navy)
Captain is a senior officer rank of the Royal Navy. It ranks above Commander and below Commodore and has a NATO ranking code of OF-5. The rank is equivalent to a Colonel in the British Army or Royal Marines and to a Group Captain in the Royal Air Force. The rank of Group Captain is based on the...
on the Retired List
Navy List
A Navy List or Naval Register is an official list of naval officers, their ranks and seniority, the ships which they command or to which they are appointed, etc., that is published by the government or naval authorities of a country....
and was appointed Head of the Historical Section of the Naval Staff, and Alan Ramsay (b.1887) who achieved Flag Rank in 1938. Dewar performed so well in Britannia, that upon graduation, he was appointed Midshipman straight away, which normally required a year's service at sea and passing an examination. He joined the protected cruiser
Protected cruiser
The protected cruiser is a type of naval cruiser of the late 19th century, so known because its armoured deck offered protection for vital machine spaces from shrapnel caused by exploding shells above...
Hawke
HMS Hawke (1891)
HMS Hawke, launched in 1891, was the sixth British warship to be named Hawke. She was an Edgar-class protected cruiser.-Service:...
on 20 August 1895. The following year he was appointed to the battleship
Battleship
A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of heavy caliber guns. Battleships were larger, better armed and armored than cruisers and destroyers. As the largest armed ships in a fleet, battleships were used to attain command of the sea and represented the apex of a...
Magnificent
HMS Magnificent (1894)
HMS Magnificent was one of the nine Majestic-class battleships of the Royal Navy .-Technical characteristics:HMS Magnificent was laid down on 18 December 1893 at Chatham Dockyard...
on 30 October 1896. Promoted Acting Sub-Lieutenant
Sub-Lieutenant
Sub-lieutenant is a military rank. It is normally a junior officer rank.In many navies, a sub-lieutenant is a naval commissioned or subordinate officer, ranking below a lieutenant. In the Royal Navy the rank of sub-lieutenant is equivalent to the rank of lieutenant in the British Army and of...
, Dewar was confirmed in that rank and promoted to Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
on 8 March 1900. Upon promotion he was posted to the Devonport
HMNB Devonport
Her Majesty's Naval Base Devonport , is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy . HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England...
destroyer
Destroyer
In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast and maneuverable yet long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller, powerful, short-range attackers. Destroyers, originally called torpedo-boat destroyers in 1892, evolved from...
Osprey
HMS Osprey (1897)
HMS Osprey was a 30 knot Gipsy-class destroyer which served with the Royal Navy . She was launched by Fairfield on the 7th of April 1897, served in home waters through World War I and was broken up after hostilities ended in 1919.-References:...
on 15 March. On 12 June he was appointed to the torpedo-boat destroyer Fervent.
Gunnery officer
Following this period at sea, Lieutenant Dewar was selected to specialise in gunnery duties. His time training at HMS Excellent, the gunnery school at Portsmouth, coincided with that of the captaincy of Percy ScottPercy Scott
Admiral Sir Percy Moreton Scott, 1st Baronet GCB KCVO was a British Royal Navy officer and a pioneer in modern naval gunnery.-Early years:...
, the renowned gunnery expert. His performance on the two-year course was so impressive that on graduation he was given command of a ship. From 21 July 1903, Dewar was Lieutenant and Commander of the Chatham-based destroyer Mermaid
HMS Mermaid (1898)
HMS Mermaid was a Mermaid-class destroyer of the Royal Navy. She was launched by Hawthorne Leslie on 22 February 1898, served during the Great War and was broken up in 1919....
.
Dewar became the gunnery officer of the armoured cruiser Kent
HMS Kent (1901)
HMS Kent was a Monmouth-class armoured cruiser of 9,800 tons displacement, of the British Royal Navy. She was launched on 6 March 1901, with her heaviest guns being 6 inch quick-firers...
on 24 August 1905, where he remained until 1908. Dewar's dedication and standard of training became evident when his ship led the Fleet in battle practice firings and gunlayer's-test. He was re-assigned to Excellent on 19 January 1908 for instruction duties. Soon he was sent to sea again, being made gunnery officer of the battleship Prince George
HMS Prince George (1895)
HMS Prince George was a Majestic-class predreadnought battleship launched in 1895. She was named after the future George V of the United Kingdom and was the fourth and final ship to bear that name.-Technical description:...
on 8 February 1908. He rejoined Excellent on 22 December that year. On 11 June 1909 Dewar was "lent" as gunnery officer to the protected cruiser Spartiate for the annual fleet manœuvres. Once the manœuvres were finished, Dewar was made assistant to the Inspector of Target Practice, an important gunnery position at the Admiralty on 17 July. In the same year, he was asked to lecture on the Imperial Japanese Navy
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
, which he had previously had experience of, at the Royal Naval War College at Portsmouth. During his talk, he exhibited an unpalatable forthrightness by saying that the Royal Navy needed more intellectual officers like Togo Heihachiro
Togo Heihachiro
Fleet Admiral Marquis was a Fleet Admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy and one of Japan's greatest naval heroes. He was termed by Western journalists as "the Nelson of the East".-Early life:...
, implying that there was a dearth of such officers. The President of the College, Lewis Bayly
Lewis Bayly (Royal Navy officer)
Sir Lewis Bayly , KCB, KCMG, CVO, was a British admiral during the First World War.-Early life:Bayly was born at Woolwich on 28 September 1857. He was a greatgreatnephew of Admiral Keats. Bayly joined the Royal Navy in 1870. He served in the Third Anglo-Ashanti War and against pirates in the Congo...
, abruptly terminated his lecture.
On 1 January 1910, Dewar was once more given sea duty as First Lieutenant and Gunnery Officer (referred to as "1st and G") of Dreadnought
HMS Dreadnought (1906)
HMS Dreadnought was a battleship of the British Royal Navy that revolutionised naval power. Her entry into service in 1906 represented such a marked advance in naval technology that her name came to be associated with an entire generation of battleships, the "dreadnoughts", as well as the class of...
. Dreadnought was still one of the most prestigious postings in the fleet despite the growing number of newer dreadnought
Dreadnought
The dreadnought was the predominant type of 20th-century battleship. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts...
battleships and battle cruisers entering service. It was Dewar's misfortune during this service to be taken in by the Dreadnought hoax
Dreadnought hoax
The Dreadnought Hoax was a practical joke pulled by Horace de Vere Cole in 1910. Cole tricked the Royal Navy into showing their flagship, the warship HMS Dreadnought to a supposed delegation of Abyssinian royals...
on 10 February, in which he escorted a party of practical jokers, that included Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
, pretending to be Abyssinian
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
royalty on an official visit to the battleship. However, Dewar befriended the captain, Herbert Richmond
Herbert Richmond
Admiral Sir Herbert William Richmond KCB was a prominent naval officer, who also served as Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge University and Master of Downing College, Cambridge...
, who acted both as a friend and a mentor to him in the following years. With Richmond's encouragement, Dewar began a thorough study of naval tactics and strategy which would later continue at the Royal Naval War College.
Promotion to commander
Dewar was reappointed to Dreadnought on 28 March 1911, was promoted Commander on 22 June and on 14 December he was appointed for duty at the Royal Naval War College, Portsmouth as an instructor. The next year he was selected to join the newly formed War Staff at the Admiralty, created on First lord of the Admiralty Winston ChurchillWinston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
's orders in 1912. He was consequently reappointed for duty at the War College on 2 April 1912. On 4 March 1913 it was announced that Commander Dewar had been awarded the Gold Medal and Trench-Gascoigne prize by the Royal United Service Institution for his winning essay on the question "What is the war value of oversea commerce? How did it affect our naval policy in the past and how does it in the present day?" The final chapter of the paper was suppressed from publication by the Admiralty; in it Dewar advocated a "distant" blockade in a war with Germany at a time (1912) when the Royal Navy was still contemplating a "close" blockade of the German coastline. In the event a distant blockade was imposed. Dewar was then and remained unsympathetic to the removal of his concluding chapter;
Dewar's reputation as an intellectual within the navy was confirmed when in 1912, he became one of the founder members of The Naval Review, an independent journal of Royal Navy officers. That year Richmond had formed a "Naval Society" with a dozen friends, Dewar among them. After Richmond went abroad on active service, Dewar decided that instead of being a society of purely discussion, it ought publish a journal, to which end he "raised subscriptions for the first issue from some forty or fifty officers of all ranks".
In 1914 Dewar was appointed commander (second-in-command) of the battleship Prince of Wales
HMS Prince of Wales (1902)
HMS Prince of Wales was a London- or Queen-class predreadnought battleship, a sub-class of the Formidable-class battleships of the British Royal Navy...
, then flagship of the 5th Battle Squadron in the 2nd Fleet (Home Fleets). On 28 July Dewar married Gertrude Margaret Stapleton-Bretherton in a service at St. Bartholomew's Church in Rainhill
Rainhill
Rainhill is a large village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, in Merseyside, England.Historically a part of Lancashire, Rainhill was formerly a township within the ecclesiastical parish of Prescot, and hundred of West Derby...
on Merseyside
Merseyside
Merseyside is a metropolitan county in North West England, with a population of 1,365,900. It encompasses the metropolitan area centred on both banks of the lower reaches of the Mersey Estuary, and comprises five metropolitan boroughs: Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, and the city of Liverpool...
. The service was conducted by the Archbishop of Liverpool
Archbishop of Liverpool
The Archbishop of Liverpool heads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Liverpool in England. As such he is the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Province of Liverpool, known also on occasion as the Northern Province.-History:...
and the Bishop of Portsmouth
Bishop of Portsmouth (Catholic)
The Bishop of Portsmouth is the Ordinary of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portsmouth in the Province of Southwark, England.The bishop's official residence is St...
. Dewar's best man was the Honourable Reginald Plunkett
Reginald Drax
Admiral The Hon. Sir Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, KCB, DSO, JP, DL was a British admiral...
, who later became known as Reginald Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax, and would go on to achieve high rank in the navy. Dewar and Gertrude had one son together, Kenneth Malcolm J. Dewar.
First World War
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
(modern-day Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
). Prince of Wales remained in the 5th Battle Squadron until 1915, when with a number of other pre-dreadnoughts she was sent to the Eastern Mediterranean to support the Gallipoli landings, the goal of which was to capture the strategically important Dardanelles Straits
Dardanelles
The Dardanelles , formerly known as the Hellespont, is a narrow strait in northwestern Turkey connecting the Aegean Sea to the Sea of Marmara. It is one of the Turkish Straits, along with its counterpart the Bosphorus. It is located at approximately...
, take Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. As second-in-command of Prince of Wales, Dewar was present for part of the naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
Naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign
The naval operations in the Dardanelles Campaign of the First World War were mainly carried out by the Royal Navy with substantial support from the French and minor contributions from Russia and Australia. The Dardanelles Campaign began as a purely naval operation...
against the Turkish positions. Following aborted attempts to lend heavy-gunfire support to the troops at ANZAC Cove
Anzac Cove
Anzac Cove is a small cove on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. It became famous as the site of World War I landing of the ANZAC on April 25, 1915. The cove is a mere long, bounded by the headlands of Ari Burnu to the north and Little Ari Burnu, known as Hell Spit, to the south...
, Dewar wrote an unofficial memo to the Rear-Admiral commanding the Eastern Mediterranean Squadron, with suggestions for the employment of indirect fire to attack Turkish targets. Dewar heard nothing of his proposals, and it was not until November, 1915 that indirect fire was used with good effect by the bulged cruiser Edgar
HMS Edgar (1890)
HMS Edgar was a first class cruiser of the Royal Navy, and lead ship of the Edgar class. She was built at Devonport and launched on 24 November 1890...
. Following the campaign, in October Dewar was given command of HM Gunnery School, Devonport. It was an important position as large numbers of Reserve
Royal Naval Reserve
The Royal Naval Reserve is the volunteer reserve force of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. The present Royal Naval Reserve was formed in 1958 by merging the original Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve , a reserve of civilian volunteers founded in 1903...
and Volunteer Reserve officers either re-qualified or qualified in gunnery duties. After a year Dewar returned to sea in command of the Abercrombie class monitor
Abercrombie class monitor
The Abercrombie class of monitors served in the Royal Navy during the First World War.-History:The four ships in this class came about when the contracted supplier of the main armament for the Greek battleship being built in Germany was unable to supply due to the British blockade...
Roberts
HMS Roberts (1915)
HMS Roberts was an Abercrombie-class monitor of the Royal Navy that served in the First World War.On November 3, 1914, Charles M. Schwab of Bethlehem Steel offered Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, the use of four 14in/45cal BL MK II twin gun turrets, originally destined for the...
, and joined the Dover Patrol in August, 1916.
In response to the German battle cruiser raids on the British coast
Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft
The Bombardment of Yarmouth and Lowestoft was a naval battle fought during the First World War between the German Empire and the British Empire in the North Sea....
, a visible response was called for to quell public anxiety. On 27 May 1916 Roberts arrived at Gorleston
Gorleston
Gorleston-On-Sea, also known colloquially as Gorleston, is a settlement in Norfolk in the United Kingdom, forming part of the larger town of Great Yarmouth. Situated at the mouth of the River Yare it was a port town at the time of the Domesday Book. The port then became a centre of fishing for...
to act as a guard ship for the port of Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth
Great Yarmouth, often known to locals as Yarmouth, is a coastal town in Norfolk, England. It is at the mouth of the River Yare, east of Norwich.It has been a seaside resort since 1760, and is the gateway from the Norfolk Broads to the sea...
, in effect acting as a coastal defence battery. Roberts fulfilled such duties at Tyneside
Tyneside
Tyneside is a conurbation in North East England, defined by the Office of National Statistics, which is home to over 80% of the population of Tyne and Wear. It includes the city of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Metropolitan Boroughs of Gateshead, North Tyneside and South Tyneside — all settlements on...
and in the Thames Estuary
Thames Estuary
The Thames Mouth is the estuary in which the River Thames meets the waters of the North Sea.It is not easy to define the limits of the estuary, although physically the head of Sea Reach, near Canvey Island on the Essex shore is probably the western boundary...
for the rest of the war. Once again Dewar was rotated back to shore, and was appointed to the Operations Division of the Naval Staff under first the Jellicoe, and then the Wemyss Boards of Admiralty. Dewar was promoted to the rank of Captain on 30 June 1918 in the Half-Yearly lists and then became Assistant Director of Plans in the Plans Division. On 17 October 1919 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) "for valuable services at the Peace Conference, Paris
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
The Paris Peace Conference was the meeting of the Allied victors following the end of World War I to set the peace terms for the defeated Central Powers following the armistices of 1918. It took place in Paris in 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities...
."
Jutland controversy
While still at the Admiralty, Dewar became embroiled with the controversies surrounding the aftermath of the Battle of JutlandBattle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
. The manner in which the battle had been fought had come under criticism, with a line drawn between those who supported Sir John Jellicoe
John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe
Admiral of the Fleet John Rushworth Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe, GCB, OM, GCVO was a British Royal Navy admiral who commanded the Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in World War I...
, who had commanded the Grand Fleet at the battle; and those who fell-in behind his then-subordinate, and successor, Sir David Beatty. Dewar followed the Beatty school of thought espoused by his former Captain, Herbert Richmond, that the battle had been lost by the staid admirals of the battleship squadrons. In November, 1920 he and his brother Captain Alfred Dewar (retired) were entrusted with compiling the Naval Staff Appreciation of the battle, which was completed in January, 1922. The two brothers had produced a body of work which favoured Beatty, for whom the Dewars' "capacity for original thinking and literary talents always held an appeal." Even Richmond, who intensely disliked Jellicoe, and was a confidant of Beatty, agreed with the Committee on Imperial Defence's official naval historian, Sir Julian Corbett
Julian Corbett
Sir Julian Stafford Corbett was a prominent British naval historian and geostrategist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, whose works helped shape the Royal Navy's reforms of that era...
who wrote that Dewar's "facts were, I found, very loose."
The Appreciation, which had originally been intended for distribution around the Royal Navy, was deemed so full of "far-reaching and astringent criticism of Jellicoe" and of new and therefore irrelevant tactical theory that Beatty and his Board of Admiralty were compelled to decide against its publication. Indeed, Admirals Roger Keyes and Ernle Chatfield were moved to write to Beatty that if published the Appreciation "would rend the service to its foundations". The final straw had been the very public heckling of Dewar when he lectured from his Appreciation to the twenty students of the Senior Officers' War Course at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. It was decided to expurgate the existing document, which had been removed from circulation and release it. It was published as The Narrative of the Battle of Jutland in 1924.
All copies of the original Appreciation were ordered destroyed in 1928 and before the "Narrative" had been published Dewar and his brother had already been barred access to the original. However, he continued to have a major impact on the historiography of the Battle of Jutland by serving throughout the 1920s as Winston Churchill's naval consultant on submarine-warfare. Churchill wrote an anti-Jellicoe tract in his World Crisis, Volume III which in large measure shared Dewar's views on tactics and even some diagrams. Although Dewar would later become a supporter of the Labour Party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
, after Churchill was passed over for a cabinet position in 1931 Dewar wrote to him on 16 November, "I am very sorry to see that you are not in the new Cabinet. I had hoped you would go to the Admiralty and do very necessary work for the Navy."
Sea duty
After four years of duty at the Admiralty, Dewar returned to sea in 1922. He was fortunate after the "Geddes AxeGeddes Axe
The Geddes Axe was the drive for public economy and retrenchment in UK government expenditure recommended in the 1920s by a Committee on National Expenditure chaired by Sir Eric Geddes and with Lord Inchcape, Lord Faringdon, Lord Maclay and Sir Guy Granet also members.-Background:During and after...
" (the systematic contraction of the Naval Service to a size substantially smaller than its pre-war level) and his controversial tenure at the Admiralty that he was still considered worthy of sea duty, the qualification for promotion to flag rank. He was appointed on 9 May to command the C class cruiser
C class cruiser
The C class was a group of twenty-eight light cruisers of the Royal Navy, and were built in a sequence of seven classes known as the Caroline , Calliope , Cambrian , Centaur , Caledon , Ceres and Carlisle classes...
Calcutta
HMS Calcutta (D82)
HMS Calcutta was a C-class light cruiser of the Royal Navy, named after the Indian city of Calcutta. She was part of the Carlisle group of the C-class of cruisers.She was laid down by Vickers Limited in 1917, and launched on 9 July 1918...
, flagship on the North America and West Indies Station. In 1923 Dewar was given command of Calcutta's sister-ship on the same station, HMS Cape Town. While on the station he had occasion to act as Flag Captain
Flag captain
In the Royal Navy, a flag captain was the captain of an admiral's flagship. During the 18th and 19th centuries, this ship might also have a "captain of the fleet", who would be ranked between the admiral and the "flag captain" as the ship's "First Captain", with the "flag captain" as the ship's...
to the Commander-in-Chief on the station, pay calls on cities as diverse as Halifax, Nova Scotia
City of Halifax
Halifax is a city in Canada, which was the capital of the province of Nova Scotia and shire town of Halifax County. It was the largest city in Atlantic Canada until it was amalgamated into Halifax Regional Municipality in 1996...
, Quebec City
Quebec City
Quebec , also Québec, Quebec City or Québec City is the capital of the Canadian province of Quebec and is located within the Capitale-Nationale region. It is the second most populous city in Quebec after Montreal, which is about to the southwest...
and Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
while cruising the Eastern Seaboard of North America. During the U.S. blockade of the Mexican port of Tampico
Tampico
Tampico is a city and port in the state of Tamaulipas, in the country of Mexico. It is located in the southeastern part of the state, directly north across the border from Veracruz. Tampico is the third largest city in Tamaulipas, and counts with a population of 309,003. The Metropolitan area of...
in 1924 Dewar and Cape Town cancelled their planned cruise of the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
to adequately represent the British government at Vera Cruz
Veracruz
Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...
, proceeding there on 4 January.
On 15 May 1924 Dewar was relieved in command of Cape Town by Captain G.H. Knowles, DSO
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
. On 2 May 1925 he returned to the Admiralty as Deputy Director of Naval Intelligence. After two years in the position he was relieved in June, 1927 and given, from 15 October command of the battleship Royal Oak, flagship of the Rear-Admiral in the 1st Battle Squadron
1st Battle Squadron (United Kingdom)
The British 1st Battle Squadron was a squadron of battleships, initially part of the Royal Navy's Home Fleet, renamed the Grand Fleet during World War I...
, Mediterranean Fleet. The Rear-Admiral, 1st Battle Squadron was Bernard St. George Collard.
"The Royal Oak Mutiny"
Dewar and Daniel, feeling that morale was sinking due to these public displays, wrote letters of complaint which were given to Collard on 10 March, on the eve of a major exercise. Collard forwarded the letters to his superior, Vice-Admiral Sir John Kelly; he immediately passed them on to the Commander-in-Chief Admiral Sir Roger Keyes. On realising that the relationship between the two and their Flag Officer had irretrievably broken down, Keyes ordered the exercise postponed by fifteen hours and ordered a Court of Inquiry to be convened. As a consequence, Collard was ordered to strike his flag in Royal Oak and Dewar and Daniel were ordered back to Britain. The Admiralty was informed of the bare facts on the 12th and Keyes proceeded to sea with the Mediterranean Fleet for the exercise as planned. The press picked up on the story worldwide, describing the affair—with some hyperbole—as a "mutiny". Public attention reached such proportions as to raise the concerns of the King
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
, who summoned First Lord of the Admiralty William Bridgeman
William Clive Bridgeman
William Clive Bridgeman, 1st Viscount Bridgeman, PC, JP, DL was a British Conservative politician and peer. He notably served as Home Secretary between 1922 and 1924.-Background and education:...
for an explanation.
Having arrived back in England, Dewar and Daniel gave their version of events at the Admiralty, and put in writing requests for reinstatement in their positions in Royal Oak, or trial by Court-martial
Court-martial
A court-martial is a military court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of members of the armed forces subject to military law, and, if the defendant is found guilty, to decide upon punishment.Most militaries maintain a court-martial system to try cases in which a breach of...
. Having received Keyes' full dispatch on 16 March, the Board of Admiralty resolved that Dewar and Daniel should undergo trial by Court-martial as soon as possible at Gibraltar
Gibraltar
Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...
, where Royal Oak was due to be berthed. Consequently Dewar and Commander Daniel departed Southampton in the P&O
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company
The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company, which is usually known as P&O, is a British shipping and logistics company which dated from the early 19th century. Following its sale in March 2006 to Dubai Ports World for £3.9 billion, it became a subsidiary of DP World; however, the P&O...
liner Malwa with their counsel, Mr. Day Kimball, and their wives, on the 24th and reached Gibraltar in the evening of the 27th. The two officers were immediately attached to the Gibraltar base ship, HMS Cormorant in accordance with naval custom. It was arranged that Daniel would face Court-martial first, on 30 March, and Dewar's would follow at its conclusion.
The Courts-martial were held publicly in hangar "A" of the aircraft carrier
Aircraft carrier
An aircraft carrier is a warship designed with a primary mission of deploying and recovering aircraft, acting as a seagoing airbase. Aircraft carriers thus allow a naval force to project air power worldwide without having to depend on local bases for staging aircraft operations...
Eagle
HMS Eagle (1918)
HMS Eagle was an early aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy. Ordered by Chile as the Almirante Cochrane, she was laid down before World War I. In early 1918 she was purchased by Britain for conversion to an aircraft carrier; this work was finished in 1924...
. Because ten Captains from the fleet sat as members of the Court, the departure of the Mediterranean Fleet was delayed until the end of the proceedings. Out of four charges which Daniel faced, two related to writing an allegedly subversive letter (the complaint) and the latter two to publicly reading it out to officers of Royal Oak. Dewar consequently faced the charge of having forwarded said subversive letter. The court found Daniel "guilty" on all four charges in the afternoon of 3 April and dismissed him from his ship and ordered him to be severely reprimanded.
Dewar's own Court-martial began on 4 April. The Court trying him was composed of five Rear-Admirals and eight Captains. Dewar pleaded "not guilty to two charges of accepting and forwarding a letter subversive of discipline and contrary to King's Regulations and Admiralty Instructions". Dewar had the opportunity of cross-examining Rear-Admiral Collard over the incident of the dance and the disembarkation. Collard admitted to saying certain things but refused to say that he had used improper words and not in earshot of anyone other than the Captain.
In his defence, Dewar attacked one of the charges against him, namely that of contravening Article 11 of King's Regulations; he declared the charge invalid because his actions did not "bring him into contempt", and from witness testimony he portrayed himself as having acted in the best interests of his ships, his actions against Rear-Admiral Collard having been made out of a sense of duty and loyalty and not malice. Discounting one charge, he said, meant that the first had to fail as well.
The Court reached its verdict on 5 April. The first charge was found proven, the second unproven, and Dewar was therefore acquitted of acting against regulations. However, despite his spotless record, when the Court sentenced him he was dismissed HMS Cormorant, and severely reprimanded—a potentially career-destroying result. However, there was some popular support for his continued service in the navy. Questions were asked in the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
as to whether Dewar or Daniel would be found new positions. The First Lord, Bridgeman, stated that they would be found positions in the Navy as soon as vacancies arose. Dewar's career was reprieved for the time being. Daniel however resigned from the service, and following a unsuccessful attempt at a career in journalism, disappeared into obscurity in South Africa.
Post-Royal Oak
Dewar was once more given duty at sea. However, he was to be relegated to second-rate commands for a man of his seniority. Much to the surprise of many, on 25 September 1928 it was announced that from 5 November Dewar would be given command of the battle cruiser TigerHMS Tiger (1913)
The 11th HMS Tiger was a battlecruiser of the Royal Navy, built by John Brown and Company, Clydebank, Scotland, and launched in 1913. Tiger was the most heavily armoured battlecruiser of the Royal Navy at the start of the First World War although she was still being finished when the war began...
, the oldest of her type still in service and engaged primarily in training. However, it demonstrated the Admiralty's continued albeit conditional faith in him. He commanded Tiger until he was given command of HMS Iron Duke
HMS Iron Duke (1912)
HMS Iron Duke was a battleship of the Royal Navy, the lead ship of her class, named in honour of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington. She served as the flagship of the Grand Fleet during the First World War, including at the Battle of Jutland...
the following year. On 29 May 1929 he was made a naval aide-de-camp
Aide-de-camp
An aide-de-camp is a personal assistant, secretary, or adjutant to a person of high rank, usually a senior military officer or a head of state...
(ADC) to King George V
George V of the United Kingdom
George V was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 through the First World War until his death in 1936....
. However, Dewar's time in the Navy was drawing to a close. On 4 August he was finally promoted to Rear-Admiral, and the following day he was retired. Promotion to flag rank also saw the end of his duty as ADC to the King. On the day of his promotion he was also granted the Good Service pension of £150 per annum.
Standing for Parliament
In the 1931 General ElectionUnited Kingdom general election, 1931
The United Kingdom general election on Tuesday 27 October 1931 was the last in the United Kingdom not held on a Thursday. It was also the last election, and the only one under universal suffrage, where one party received an absolute majority of the votes cast.The 1931 general election was the...
, Dewar stood as a Labour party
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
candidate in Portsmouth North, where he lost against the incumbent by 14,149 votes. Once more however Dewar was unable to escape controversy, having put up posters around the naval city which raised indignation among many sailors and officers.
The posters, which Dewar himself called "propaganda sheets", were titled "Admiral Dewar's Election News", and carried the statement "The British Navy at Jutland
Battle of Jutland
The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle between the British Royal Navy's Grand Fleet and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet during the First World War. The battle was fought on 31 May and 1 June 1916 in the North Sea near Jutland, Denmark. It was the largest naval battle and the only...
in 1916 beat the ex-Kaiser; and at Invergordon
Invergordon
Invergordon is a town and port in Easter Ross, in Ross and Cromarty, Highland, Scotland.-History:The town is well known for the Invergordon Mutiny of 1931. More recently it was also known for the repair of oil rigs which used to be lined up in the Cromarty Firth on which the town is situated...
in 1931 it beat Mr. Montagu Norman
Montagu Norman
Montagu Collet Norman, 1st Baron Norman DSO PC was an English banker, best known for his role as the Governor of the Bank of England from 1920 to 1944...
", and featured prominently a depiction of the former Kaiser of Germany in civilian clothing in front of a sea battle, with the Governor of the Bank of England
Governor of the Bank of England
The Governor of the Bank of England is the most senior position in the Bank of England. It is nominally a civil service post, but the appointment tends to be from within the Bank, with the incumbent grooming his or her successor...
, Montagu Norman, looking on. A notice beneath the picture read:
Dewar was accused of comparing Jutland to the Invergordon Mutiny
Invergordon Mutiny
The Invergordon Mutiny was an industrial action by around 1,000 sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet, that took place on 15–16 September 1931...
, which rankled with many servicemen who had fought at Jutland but had taken no part in the 1931 mutiny in Northern Scotland. He claimed in his defence–a statement issued to the press on 29 October 1931–that he had had nothing to do with the design or production of the poster, which had been published by the National Cooperative Publishing Society. Later, however, Dewar wrote, "I deeply regret that this picture should ever have been associated with my name." At this point he had already lost at the polls by a substantial margin, the election having taken place on the 27 October.
Later life
As part of Navy Week in 1933 on 5 August, Dewar was invited to open a naval paintings exhibition at the Ilford Galleries in London. He took the opportunity to praise the Washington Naval ConferenceWashington Naval Conference
The Washington Naval Conference also called the Washington Arms Conference, was a military conference called by President Warren G. Harding and held in Washington from 12 November 1921 to 6 February 1922. Conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations, it was attended by nine nations...
and its successor
London Naval Conference
There were three major international naval conferences in London, the first in 1908-09, the second in 1930 and the third in 1935. The latter two, together with the Washington Naval Conference in 1921-22 and the Geneva Conferences , resulted in agreements between the major powers on navy vessel...
, and to criticise the size of the Treaty battleship
Treaty battleship
A treaty battleship was a battleship built in the 1920s or 1930s under the terms of one of a number of international treaties governing warship construction...
. On the Retired List of the Royal Navy, he was promoted to the rank of Vice-Admiral (Retd.) on 31 July 1934.
In early 1939 Dewar's memoirs were published. Entitled The Navy from Within he recounted his life story, while at the same time criticising severely the manner in which the Royal Navy trained its officers, blaming defects in said training for the naval failure at Gallipoli. However, his account was criticised as being far too harsh and at points hypocritical, for after condemning the naval system of training he then makes many mentions of naval officers who he himself considered to be excellent. In a letter to The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
, Dewar complained that their reviewer was taking far too much issue with the author, which as the reviewer pointed out, "a review of an autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
must necessarily deal largely with the author himself". Responding to a review of The Navy from Within in The Naval Review which questioned the prominence of "The Royal Oak Affair" in the book, Dewar responded by stating;
Dewar, despite the attached stigma of the mutiny and criticism of his memoirs, was still held in high regard by many, and as war approached he wrote a number of letters to The Times criticising the cost of the Air Raid Precautions
Air Raid Precautions
Air Raid Precautions was an organisation in the United Kingdom set up as an aid in the prelude to the Second World War dedicated to the protection of civilians from the danger of air-raids. It was created in 1924 as a response to the fears about the growing threat from the development of bomber...
network, which attracted much support in the "Letters" pages in that newspaper. During the Second World War he returned to the Admiralty, working under his brother Alfred in the Historical Section of the Training and Staff Duties Division. After the war ended, Dewar would win one final victory when he sued the author and publisher of a book on Admiral Keyes for libel in 1953. In the book written by Brigadier-General Aspinall Oglander was a letter from Keyes to the King's private secretary, Lord Stamfordham in which Keyes accused Dewar of having made contact with the press in his defence. Dewar denied this and the High Court of Justice
High Court of Justice
The High Court of Justice is, together with the Court of Appeal and the Crown Court, one of the Senior Courts of England and Wales...
agreed with him, finding in his favour. The solicitors acting on behalf of Aspinall-Oglander and the publishers, Hogarth Press Ltd., agreed to apologise in court and paid Dewar damages and expenses.
In 1957 he returned to his earlier theme on the failings of officer training, in a three-part exposition on the Dardanelles Campaign for The Naval Review, the journal he had helped found over forty years previously. In the concluding article, published in October, 1957, Dewar wrote that the failure of the Navy to adequately support the Army at Gallipoli "is to be found in the system of training officers which consciously or unconsciously suppressed independent thought and suggestions from subordinates." Despite his later close association with Churchill, he criticised the former First Lord's unrealistic expectations and also Lord Fisher's inability to rein him in for want of a naval staff; and Admiral of the Fleet
Admiral of the Fleet
An admiral of the fleet is a military naval officer of the highest rank. In many nations the rank is reserved for wartime or ceremonial appointments...
(at the time Commodore
Commodore (Royal Navy)
Commodore is a rank of the Royal Navy above Captain and below Rear Admiral. It has a NATO ranking code of OF-6. The rank is equivalent to Brigadier in the British Army and Royal Marines and to Air Commodore in the Royal Air Force.-Insignia:...
) Roger Keyes for actively trying to gain support for forcing the straits again instead of acting as chief of staff and only advising the Naval Commander at the Dardanelles.
Dewar was given the last rites
Last Rites
The Last Rites are the very last prayers and ministrations given to many Christians before death. The last rites go by various names and include different practices in different Christian traditions...
on 8 September 1964 and died at his home in Worthing
Worthing
Worthing is a large seaside town with borough status in West Sussex, within the historic County of Sussex, forming part of the Brighton/Worthing/Littlehampton conurbation. It is situated at the foot of the South Downs, west of Brighton, and east of the county town of Chichester...
, Sussex
Sussex
Sussex , from the Old English Sūþsēaxe , is an historic county in South East England corresponding roughly in area to the ancient Kingdom of Sussex. It is bounded on the north by Surrey, east by Kent, south by the English Channel, and west by Hampshire, and is divided for local government into West...
. He was buried at St. Bartholomew's Church, Rainhill
Rainhill
Rainhill is a large village and civil parish of the Metropolitan Borough of St Helens, in Merseyside, England.Historically a part of Lancashire, Rainhill was formerly a township within the ecclesiastical parish of Prescot, and hundred of West Derby...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
on 12 September.